Songs for Petra

Singer Petra Haden excels in this beautiful and unique program of songs penned by the songwriting team of John Zorn and Jesse Harris. Friends for many years, they began working together on “The Song Project” in 2012, and eight years later this CD presents the full fruits of their collaboration: thirteen Zorn compositions with original lyrics by Jesse Harris. Including selections from a wide variety of Zorn CDs (and one original that has never appeared on CD before), the melodies are catchy, the lyrics heartfelt, the grooves deep and the solos profound and exhilarating. Backed by the amazing Julian Lage, Jorge Roeder and Kenny Wollesen and produced by Jesse Harris, this is a CD that you will listen to again and again.

SONGS FOR PETRA had its nascence in 2012 when John Zorn created The Song Project, a group dedicated to transforming his compositions into songs with lyrics. That group, however, did not include Petra Haden, and its roots went back even further — or I should say deeper.

Though I had released an instrumental album, Cosmo, on Tzadik Records in 2010 and written a piece for one of the Arcana books, Zorn and I were already several years into a friendship that has since amounted to countless meals all over New York and the Tri-State Area, conversations, sharing of books and films, music tours and wanderings through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Frick, Cloisters, Botanical Gardens and Bronx Zoo.

But back to 2012. To celebrate his 60th birthday Zorn organized a series of marathon concerts that would occur internationally throughout 2013, featuring all of his musical manifestations, from classical to metal to Masada.

The Song Project would be unique in that it alone cherry-picked pieces from all these genres, with lyrics added by Mike Patton, Sofía Rei, Sean Lennon and myself. Patton, Rei and I were the singers, backed by a band that included Marc Ribot, John Medeski, Joey Baron, and Kenny Wollesen (on vibraphone at that point, not drums). One moment Patton, sounding as though a distortion pedal had been surgically implanted in his throat, would scream something from Naked City; the next Rei would croon a bolero in Spanish; and then I would sing a soft confessional taken from Zorn’s Alhambra Trio. We performed all over Europe, in Australia and, finally, in New York, where we recorded an album. During this period I wrote the lyrics for Waiting for Christmas (aka Mountain View), The Wind in the Clouds (aka Tamalpais), Kafiristan (aka Towards Kafiristan) and a version of My Forbidden Tears (aka Forbidden Tears), later to be rewritten.

That same year the guitarist (and my old friend), Anthony Wilson, invited me to perform with his collective, The Curators, at Blue Whale, a club in Los Angeles. He also asked whether I would pick up the other singer performing that night, Petra Haden, because she didn’t drive. After the show she and I decided to make an album together and soon began developing a repertoire. The result was Seemed Like a Good Idea — Petra Haden Sings Jesse Harris. A footnote might have added *and Zorn/Harris, because we recorded It Was Innocent, a new song based on John’s composition, Song of Innocence. When he heard Petra’s version, as well as her dazzling acappella albums, he was, to say the least, bowled over.

Petra and I went on to tour the US, Japan and the UK, both at the London Jazz Festival and the Meltdown Festival, the year David Byrne was “guest curator.”

In 2014 Zorn and I presented a private house concert of The Song Project at my apartment in New York, premiering two new pieces, Taking My Time (aka Song of Experience) and the aforementioned It Was Innocent, both inspired by William Blake (Song of Innocence and Song of Experience) and both of which I sang, accompanied by Julian Lage on acoustic guitar. Sofía Rei followed, with JC Maillard on guitar and Jorge Roeder upright bass.

As Lage and Zorn were becoming fast friends and collaborators, Julian and I were also working on projects, with him asking me to produce his two trio albums, Arclight and Modern Lore, both of which included Kenny Wollesen on drums.

By degrees these musical spheres were moving ever closer together.

The final spark igniting the Petra/Zorn connection occurred in late 2017, during the final months of the The Stone’s location on Avenue B, when Zorn offered me a week-long residency. I dedicated one night to all of our songs. John suggested we invite Petra to sing most of them and Julian’s trio with Jorge and Kenny to be the band, along with me on acoustic guitar and some vocals. Petra also played violin. I wrote new lyrics to fill out the set: Easy Time (aka Once Upon a Time), Lost in the Rain (aka Gormenghast) and a reworked My Forbidden Tears, though the words for the bridge remained unfinished.

Inspired by Petra’s performance, Zorn feverishly composed a body of six numbered pieces, to be sung with words, written by me, titled Songs for Petra. Not only were the melodies difficult for lyric writing, but it seemed impossible to transform them into songs for a vocalist. Zorn disagreed. He insisted lyrics could be written to the melodies and encouraged me to try. To assist me — as well as to learn them himself — Julian recorded acoustic guitar demos of each one.

I started with the easy ones, which became All This Time and Listen, and then procrastinated until finally using a kind of word game to tackle the others.

From this process came I Never Thought, Over Your Head and Nothing. The only composition I was never able to give lyrics was what we called #5 at the shows (Petra would scat sing the melody in unison with Julian), later titled Rififi by Zorn. One day maybe I’ll get that one.

John had also prodded me to finish the bridge of Forbidden Tears, which we finally began to perform.

Our New York show at Rockwood Music Hall in the spring of 2018 was
pivotal, because Zorn made two decisions: Petra should stop playing violin to focus on singing, giving more room to Julian as the featured soloist; and I should stop singing lead vocals, allowing Petra to be the featured singer.

After a short European tour in the fall of 2018 and another in the US in early 2019 the band was eager to record. Two factors delayed this plan: not only were everyone’s dates impossible to coordinate, but Zorn felt that we should wait to let the music germinate and develop more naturally. With time, he said, we could get deeper into, and more comfortable with, the material.

And so we waited…a year.
In February 2020, a five-day session was scheduled to record and mix the entire album — thirteen songs — at my apartment, using my home “studio.” Quotation marks are used here because the studio consists only of one short rack of gear, microphones, headphones and Pro Tools. Kenny and his drums set up in my bedroom; Jorge and his upright bass in the living room; Julian with his guitar next to Jorge (wired to his amp in the second bedroom); Petra in my office behind Vira, our engineer. I was set up with my guitar by the front door. We recorded live. Julian didn’t overdub a single solo. Petra’s vocals are either from the live takes or from the third day of recording, which we dedicated to her adding harmonies and picking her favorite performances from overdubs she had done immediately following the band’s recording of each song. Finishing thirteen vocals in one eight-hour day is an impressive feat; moreover — for those who might wonder — not one single note was tuned artificially. Listen to the album’s difficult melodies and that last detail becomes particularly impressive.

So here you have it, Songs For Petra, the official document of the songs of Zorn and Harris, eight years in the making. It could not have happened without the skill and dedication of Petra Haden, Julian Lage, Jorge Roeder and Kenny Wollesen, nor without the generous support, not to mention compositions, of John Zorn.
– Jesse Harris, NYC, February 2020